Frederick was born in October 1861 at Portman Barracks in London where his father was serving as a Grenadier Guardsman. His childhood must have been unusual as they moved around various different locations depending on where his father was posted. When his brother Ernest William was born in 1869 he was living at Chelsea Barracks and then they moved to the Wellington Barracks before the 1871 census.

Frederick was still a minor when his mother (1872) and then his father (1880) died, after which his uncle, his father's brother, was appointed as legal guardian. He must have decided to emigrate to Australia as he arrived in New South Wales in about 1890 and become a farmer, although there is no evidence as to the type of farm or what he did there. Aged 34, in August 1896 he married spinster Elizabeth Mary Bowser at the Church of St Luke in Liverpool, a suburb of Sydney. She was born in Dunedin, New Zealand about 1864 and was a tailoress.

What he made of his life in Australia isn't known but they probably weren't very well off. By 1920 the farming life was a thing of the past and he had become a "labourer" and "boiler maker's laborer".

1st November 1920

On 1st November 1920 he died aged just 59 at Balmain Hospital after sustaining internal injuries resulting from falling 20 feet onto the dock from scaffolding while working on a ship at Cockatoo Island, where he was working at the Commonwealth Naval Dockyard. He was buried on 3rd November in the Field of Mars Cemetery, North Ryde, New South Wales, and some kind person recently took the photographs below of his grave for me.

What was remarkable is that his widow, Elizabeth, took his employers to court and the Commonwealth admitted liability under the Workmen's Compensation Act. In February 1921 she was awarded compensation of £500 which is equivalent to about £17,500 in today's terms using the RPI.

Sadly Elizabeth died just over a year later in June 1922 aged 58.

Cockatoo Island

Cockatoo Island

This is a UNESCO World Heritage site in Sydney Harbour, New South Wales.

Between 1839 and 1869 Cockatoo Island operated as a convict penal establishment, primarily as a place of secondary punishment for convicts who had re-offended in the colonies.

Shipbuilding began on Cockatoo Island in 1870. In 1913, Cockatoo Island was transferred to the Commonwealth Government to become the Naval Dockyard of the Royal Australian Navy. Over a period of several years prior to the First World War five slipways were either upgraded or constructed in the island. The torpedo boat destroyer HMAS Warrego was the first naval ship launched at Cockatoo Island, after being built in the United Kingdom, disassembled, then sent to the Australian shipyard for reassembly. During World War I, the dockyard built, repaired and refitted many ships. At its peak during the war, some 4,000 men were employed on the island.